Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

"

stantial, to the exclusion of the purely ornamental. There may be some ground for this remark, if we judge entirely by what the Americans have actually accomplished, in the way of splendid edifices and in the founding of those great institutions for the cultivation of the fine arts, of which some of the European nations can boast. But with us, the time of these things is not yet. It would be transcending the powers granted by their several constitutions, for the general or state governments to employ the public funds for the purpose, in imitation of Rome and France; and a Louvre or a Vatican is hardly within the reach of any voluntary combination of individuals. In the literary world, we acknowledge that comparatively little attention has been paid to those works which may be classed among mental luxuries; but we will not admit that we have been at all deficient in those which form the real aliment of the soul. In nations the law of individuals is reversed, and reason comes to maturity before imagination and the love of the fine arts.

With regard to another endowment, the Americans are thus described:

[ocr errors]

"I never saw a population so divested of all gayety: there is no trace of this feeling from one end of the Union to the other."—Mrs. Trollope, p. 171.

"There is not a more imaginative people existing. They prefer broad humor, and delight in the hyperbole."-Marryat, 2d. Series, p. 142. "They certainly are not a humorous people, and their temperament always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy character.”—Dickens, p. 91.

"The only time when I felt disposed to quarrel with the inexhaustible American mirth was on the hottest days of summer. I liked it as well as ever; but European strength will not stand more than an hour or two of laughter in such seasons. I cannot conceive how it is that so little has been heard in England of the mirth of the Americans; for certainly nothing in their manners struck and pleased me more. One of the rarest characters among them, and a great treasure to all his sportive neighbors, is a man who cannot take a joke.”—Miss Martineau's Retrospect, vol. ii, p. 184.

"The Kentuckians are the only Americans who can understand a joke."-Hamilton, vol. ii, p. 93.

Here is certainly as ludicrous a mélange of opinions as could be desired, even if it were penned for the express purpose of culti vating the organ of mirthfulness. And yet our peripatetic oracles all lay down their irreconcilable propositions with unutterable gravity. And the doleful groans of some of our countrymen at the misrepresentations of writers who differ from each other, toto cœlo, are, if possible, a still more powerful stimulant to the sense of the

ludicrous. But let us not torture these poor authors without cause. We doubt not but that the Americans really appeared to them as they have described them. A sour, bitter "old woman," as Mrs. Trollope's writings seem to prove her to be, might travel from the river unto the ends of the earth, and never see a smile, except, perhaps, a stray one intended for somebody else. And another tourist, like Miss Martineau, who appears to be endowed with that pliability of mental constitution which enabled her, with equal ease, to discuss political economy with statesmen, and create all sorts of fun for the amusement of her companions, would conclude the "free-borns" a less gloomy people than Mrs. Trollope had imagined. Capt. Marryat qualifies his remark by adding, that although the Americans are fond of broad humor, they cannot comprehend refined, acute wit. How the captain should discover this, even allowing its truth, passes our calculation; as this very deficiency is notoriously his own. He is fond of humor, and makes prodigious efforts to be witty; but it is all of the low comedy order: and even then his witticisms, although concocted with so much labor, do not afford a tithe of the amusement which springs from the perusal of his profound reasonings. However, a blind philosopher once lectured upon optics.

With regard to what is called in common phrase disposition, our witnesses testify pretty unanimously. Capt. Hall, and of course his satellite, Capt. Marryat, declare the Americans a "very goodtempered people." Miss Martineau discourses thus:

"If I am asked what is the peculiar charm, I reply with some hesitation: there are so many. But I believe it is not so much the outward plenty, or the mutual freedom, or the incessant play of humor, which characterizes the whole people, as the sweet temper which is diffused like sunshine over the land. They have been called the most goodtempered people in the world, and I think they must be so."-Soc. in America, vol. ii, p. 188.

If the Americans are as fond of flattery as some have asserted, these admissions ought to put even the few cynics among us in as good a humor as Diogenes doubtless felt when Alexander no longer stood between him and the sun. Miss Martineau attributes this peculiarity to our republican institutions, which render the Saxon race more amiable here than in some other regions. The theory of our government demands "reverence for man, as man." Capt. Marryat, with all his horror of republicanism and antiquated spinsters, here agrees with Miss Martineau, although he avoids mentioning her name, while he repeats her argument. The freebooter, however, generally erases all trace of former ownership,

But a mere theory would hardly keep a whole nation in good humor for half a century, nor would the abstract truth that "all men are by nature free and equal" have any very powerful effect in curbing passion. There are influences at work, however, which repress the insolence of office and of wealth. The politician knows that the humblest citizen can aid in exalting him to the station he covets, or in defeating his aspirations; and it is therefore his interest to conciliate him by urbanity. And demagogues, like their great prototype, Absalom, who, when any "came to do him obeisance, took him and kissed him," well know that this is the way to "steal the hearts of the men of Israel." Another corrective of outward deportment is found in our universal prosperity. The theory may render men more restiff under oppression, but nothing but mutual dependence, and independence, can repress haughtiness upon the one hand, and save on the other from cringing servility, or from that defensive insolence which turns at bay. Whatever peculiar good temper the Americans may possess is more the product of their real social equality, than of their abstract metaphysics.

But we might collect an indefinite amount of counter assertions by continuing our collation of what, if all true, would be parallel passages. Miss Martineau declares the manners of the Americans "the best she ever saw;" Mrs. Trollope declares the manners of certain classes "tinged with brutal insolence, by this empty assumption of equality;" while Lieut. Coke is astonished at their universal civility of demeanor. Miss Martineau tells us that the Americans are not so prone to overestimate wealth as the English; while Capt. Marryat assures us that the love of money is our grand distinguishing trait of character; but with his usual acuteness, accounts for it from the fact that we have a president instead of a queen. Mr. Dickens, when traveling in the railway train, tells us that "everybody talks to you, or to any one else who hits his fancy;" and Mr. Lyell, also, on the railway, tells us that "the Americans address no conversation to strangers ;" disposing of the matter in a parenthesis, as if it were already known of all men. One will declare a certain city a perfect paradise; another describe the same city as a complete purgatory. Mrs. Trollope was so delighted with the beauty of one of the public buildings of Philadelphia, that she was accustomed to gather all her family and go, again and again, to contemplate, by moonlight, its magnificent proportions. Mr. Dickens, viewing the same structure, tells us that it has a "mournful, ghostlike aspect, dreary to behold;" but that his wonder at its dreariness vanished when he learned that it was that "tomb of many fortunes, the great catacomb of investment,

the United States Bank." But all this effort to raise a ghost is evidently made to give the more force to the epithets that follow. Irving shrewdly conjectures that, in Homer's wars, many a tall, good-looking Greek and Trojan was barbarously cut down and trampled in the dust, because he happened to have the proper mixture of longs and shorts in his name, to make it jingle in the poem. Mr. Dickens sometimes turns aside a little from the truth, to lay a train for a witticism.

But if our tourists are unfaithful in that which is least, it were folly unutterable to attach any great importance to either their satire or their commendations. In England there are, at this moment, two great antagonistic parties in existence;-those who believe that the people can govern themselves, and those who look with real alarm upon every accession to the popular influence in the state. And here many of the discrepancies of travelers have originated. If the tourist is of the liberal party, he will, like Miss Martineau, be disposed to look favorably upon the nation who are proving the soundness of his own principles. If he stands committed to the opposite faction, he dons the whole armor of his prejudices, declares everything public and private most certainly wrong in America, and returns home in deep despondency at the delusion of supposing the suffrages of two millions of well-informed freemen better presumptive evidence of a statesman's ability to rule, than the fact that somebody's ancestor did something nine centuries ago. We should remember, therefore, when a Hall or a Hamilton opens his battery, that although the shells are apparently aimed point-blank at us, they are intended to explode on the other side of the Atlantic.

Upon one point, however, our tourists are perfectly unanimous.

"All over America, even in those parts which have enjoyed the least advantages in the way of civilization and refinement, the women are treated with much kindness by the men."-Hall, vol. i, p. 297.

"I never once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, saw a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention."-Dickens, p. 56.

"One of the first peculiarities that must strike a foreigner in the United States, is the deference universally paid to the sex, without regard to station."-Lyell, vol. i, p. 57.

This candid statement, to which we can oppose no counter assertion, ought to console the lachrymose patriots who bewail the deep depravity of those travelers who charge our citizens with being great consumers of tobacco, "very expeditious bolters of dinner," and with sundry cognate enormities. We value such

a state of things more highly than we would the national reputation of executing bows of the exact degree of curvature recommended by Chesterfield. Capt. Hall, however, adds the remark that, although the sex are treated with the greatest outward respect, yet they have but little influence in society. He attended the great cattle-show in Massachusetts, and was "struck to the heart," as he pathetically expresses it, by the appalling fact that there were no ladies present to stare at the assemblage of bipeds and quadrupeds. But the gallant captain was not so overcome with grief as to be incapable of displaying his notable logic upon this most deplorable circumstance. After passing the fact through a sleightof-hand process, he evolves two important inferences, to wit:that the influence of the women is very feeble, and that this feebleness is owing to our republican institutions! The conclusion is about as correct as the premises, under the operation of the captain's acumen, would lead us to expect.

But we must leave our travelers to pursue their journey alone. We have not consulted them upon any point which requires profound research, or much depth of discernment. We have not touched upon the subject of government, morals, and religion, partly because we hope, upon some future occasion, to give these a more extended notice than present circumstances will admit, and partly for the reason that few of the authors upon whom we have been remarking have advanced much truth worth repeating, or much error that possesses sufficient plausibility to entitle it to the honor of a refutation. We are not bold enough to attempt to make bricks without straw; and hope that our readers will not rigidly enforce a demand that roused the spirit of rebellion, even in the peaceful land of Egypt.

We have compared their assertions upon a few matters which we would suppose most easily decided, and have found them. a mass of counter statements and counter conclusions. This demonstrates the absurdity of undue sensibility with respect to the opinions of foreign "pencilers by the way." Even studied misrepresentations are of little moment. They certainly cannot destroy our confidence in our system of government. And if they are credited abroad, although they may somewhat retard the progress of liberal opinion, yet the most important direct consequence to us will be perhaps to lessen the tide of immigration. Whether, or not, this is a consummation devoutly to be wished, we leave to our readers to decide according to their own convictions.

It may not be out of place to offer, in conclusion, a remark upon another subject which has been frequently alluded to, especially by

« VorigeDoorgaan »